Patna, Sept. 10: Imagine Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport in Mumbai being spelt with the “h” missing from the name of the legendary Maratha warrior. Or John F. Kennedy Airport in New York missing out on an “” from the great US President’s name.

Sounds absurd?

Not so in Patna.

The airport in Bihar’s capital, named after Jayaprakash Narayan, the Loknayak who brought a government to its knees in the seventies and the man who inspired a thousand politicians, doesn’t know how to correctly spell the name of the iconic leader.

The facility — originally called simply Patna airport — was renamed after JP in 1996. But the officials forgot to do their homework — the display board atop the terminal building that fliers get to see when they land in the city carried the name “Jai Prakash Narayan International Airport”.

Ignorance is bliss and for 16 years, it remained so.

The airport authorities woke up to the mistake in November 2012 after veteran journalist Kuldip Nayar highlighted the wrong spelling.

So what did the officials do? They simply replaced the “i” in JP’s first name with a “y”, oblivious to the fact that the great leader spelt his name “Jayaprakash”.

Historic documents at the Gandhi Sangrahalaya in Patna establish the callousness of the authorities. A few photo pamphlets on JP printed by the Loknayak Jayaprakash Shatabdi Samiti, Gujarat, contain his original signature, wherein he has spelt his name as “Jayaprakash Narayan”. The same spelling has been used in Prison Diary 1975, a printed version of a diary written by JP himself when he was in a jail at Chandigarh during Emergency.

“It is disappointing that the name of the most popular leader of the region is being wrongly spelt, time and again, at the city airport itself. I wonder what kind of impression it would make on people from outside,” said Razi Ahmad, secretary, Gandhi Sangrahalaya.

Sources at the Airports Authority of India (AAI) said the decision to correct the spelling was taken after it was pointed out by journalist Nayar during his visit to the city last year.

“In a report written by Nayar, he had raised several issues at the city airport, including the wrong spelling of the veteran leader. Taking cognisance of the report, the AAI headquarters had taken corrective steps and the spelling was changed from ‘Jai Prakash Narayan’ to ‘Jay Prakash Narayan’. The corresponding modification in the spelling was made in all the name plates and boards at the airport,” said a senior official of AAI at Patna.

The AAI official added that if anyone had reservations about the spelling of the airport’s name, it should be communicated to them for taking further steps.